This is the official blog about the development of OctoMY™, the robot platform for you!

2016-05-12

What is OctoMY™ ?

This post will be an introduction to concepts of OctoMY™.

I am putting all my spare time into this overly ambitious project, and there are some great things in store. However instead of waiting, I will let some details trickle out on the web early, just for good measure.

Ok so what is OctoMY™ ?

It is a free and open-source software that you should be able to easily use in your hobby robot project to be able to do a bunch of cool stuff.

Cool stuff like what? I can hear you say.

Well. This is where the "overly ambitious" part comes in. I know for this project to be successful I need to cram in some pretty cool stuff! At the same time, I know that there needs to be a lot of basic boring stuff in place too, because cool stuff usually relies on boring stuff to work. So from this notion the following plan has emerged.

OctoMY™ Agent

There are 4 "tiers" in the model:

Agent: This is your robot

Remote: This is your laptop or mobile device used to control said robot

Hub: This is your server running in the cloud or in your basement (or even in your laptop) used to keep track of multiple robots and share and store data between them.

Zoo: This is a central service run by OctoMY™ project here. It is used to brag about your robot online and allow the public to see it. Basically it's a facebook for your robots.

OctoMY™ Remote

Agent and Remote will be available as apps readily downloadable from Google Play, or as binaries for Ubuntu. Hub will most likely be available as a docker image, or as ubuntu/debian binaries. Zoo is just there running from the cloud.

OctoMY™ Hub

OctoMY™ will try to handle all the boring communication stuff and security issues for you so that your robot will have privacy and stay safe.

That was the boring bit. Now for a list of cool stuff that this "boring" platform can enable:

Controlling swarms of quad-copters from your phone.

Having an army of hexapod robots roam an area and generate a common 3D map that can be used for accurate localization and mapping (slam).

Having your robot "pick up strangers" online and exchanging "love letters" with them.

Let crowds see live streams from your robot.

Send commands to your robots via twitter.

Let your robot collaborate on tasks with the robot's of other OctoMY™ users online.

Letting other use the configurations and adaptions you make for your robot easily.

OctoMY™ Zoo

This list was just a quick one I made that was severely limited by my imagination really. The point is that with a common software stack like this and with many eager enthusiasts working on it, the possibilities are virtually endless.

Hopefully I will have some software that is worth downloading up soon.